Anthropic, the company behind the AI model Claude, has now officially been blacklisted by the Pentagon, meaning the company’s models cannot be used as part of any US defense contract. Anthropic says it will take legal action.
The US government has designated AI company Anthropic as a “supply chain risk to America’s national security”. This is the first time an American company has received this designation, further escalating the dispute between the Trump administration and the AI company. In practice, this means that US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth does not consider Anthropic’s AI models secure enough to use for his purposes. Anthropic, for its part, says it will challenge the designation in court.
Bloomberg had previously reported that Anthropic had resumed talks with the US defense department, but those discussions appear to have since been shelved.
The crux of the dispute lies in Anthropic’s refusal to make its AI tools available to the US military without ethical restrictions. The company did not want its models used for mass surveillance of the population, arguing that this might violate the Constitution. The company also rejected the use of its AI in autonomous weapons systems.
